


Knight of Wands

by lea_hazel



Series: The Ride of the Knight of Flames [1]
Category: Original Work, Tarot (Divination Cards)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Community: purimgifts, Gen, Hunters & Hunting, Internal Conflict, Soldiers, War, culture clash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 06:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13734642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lea_hazel/pseuds/lea_hazel
Summary: Hunter Farah has been attached to his company as a scout, but Captain Elden knows that she's no soldier.





	Knight of Wands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RobberBaroness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/gifts).



The third company of the Toris riders had been camping on the border of Perata, and the soldiers were getting restless. The encampment, pitched on the thickly-forested side of a steep mountain and carefully hidden from the road the in winding valley below, was murmuring with anxious activity at all hours of day and night. Even their commander, the ordinarily staid Captain Elden, was not immune to the nervous energy around him. It was no surprise, then, that his second-in-command was responding to the soldiers' restiveness with animated frustration.

"How much longer will we be delayed?" asked Farah again, that night.

Captain Elden sighed. "Orders are to wait for the fourth and sixth companies to take position, before the decisive maneuver can be called."

"It's taking too long!" said Farah.

She was pacing back and forth across the command tent, her whole body thrumming with containing energy, filling the small space with her impressing discontent.

"It will take as long as it takes," said the Captain steadily, with an apparent patience far greater than he could honestly confess to.

Taking on a Hunter as second-in-command was always risky, he'd known that going in. His superiors had cautioned him, time and again, that Hunters were not soldiers and did not know how to take orders, how to fall in line, or how to fight in formation. Yet Farah was renowned for her prowess even among Hunters, and it was certainly true that no one in third company knew the Perata border half as well as she did. Her brash impulsiveness, as grating as it was to a lifelong soldier like himself, was simply an acceptable price for access to her expertise.

"Farah," said Elden, softly but firmly. "Sit down."

Farah half-fell onto the sitting cushion on the tent floor, a tangle of loose limbs, yet somehow still coiled gracefully in on herself, like a perfect knot.

"This war has been going on forever," said Farah.

"The war," said Elden, "had been on for exactly three and a half years. You've been afield with the company for less than six months. It only feels like an eternity."

She shook her head. "You don't know how it feels."

Producing a flask from under his map table, Elden poured two cups and slid one across the table to her.

"I suppose that's true," he said, once he'd picked up his own glass and had a sip of the rust-colored cordial.

Farah straightened in her seat, casting a surprised look in his direction. She had expected him to argue the point with her.

"For the soldiers out there," he said, gesturing with the glass in his hand, "the war is between civilized society and a backwater nation of brainwashed idiots."

She winced at his unflinching assessment.

"It's not pleasant to hear," he went on mercilessly, "but it's true. The mountain men, as they call them, the Moon cult--"

"--the Dragon cult," she cut in.

"Yes," said Elden. "They're too remote, foreign beyond imagining. You're a Hunter. You've traveled the world and seen all manner of people. These soldiers have mostly never been beyond the towns and villages they were born in, before now."

Farah's lips tightened into a thin line. "That's not really what makes me different than them," she said. "That's not why this is harder for me."

"But it's true," said Elden. "It remains true, even before and beyond your own... _unique_  history."

"What are you getting at?" she asked.

"You used to be one of them," he said bluntly. "A Moon-cultist. The skirmishes before now have been nothing. Are you really so eager for the grand attack plan to come through? When we fight our way to the heart of Perata, we'll be killing cultists by the droves, and _you used to be one of them_."

Farah was silent.

"Sooner or later," said Elden, "you'll have to come to terms with that. You've ignored it so far, but no longer. You need to make peace with the idea, and you're running out of time in which to do it."

She nodded silently.

Captain Elden drained his glass and waved a dismissing hand at her. "Go to bed, Hunter Farah. Get some sleep. Orders could come in at any time."

"Yes, sir," said Farah, and quietly got up and exited the tent.

He felt good about the evening's conversation. All these months they'd skirted the sensitive subject, each of them wary of bringing it up. The soldiers only knew her by reputation as Hunter Farah, and had no idea of her origins. She had lost her accent over her years of wandering, and Elden himself only knew because his own superiors had warned him about taking her on. She was a Hunter, though, and one of the best, and she'd made him an excellent scout. He just had to be sure that when the chips fell, she wouldn't flinch. Now, finally, he could be certain that she was wholly on his side, and with the peace of mind that comes with accomplishing a goal that had seemed before insurmountable, he went himself to sleep.

He felt differently on the matter the next morning, when one of his riders woke him up at the crack of dawn to inform him that Hunter Farah's pack and horse were missing, and her tent was cold and empty. 

[ ](https://imgur.com/fCVyK3L)

[Image description: orange paper cut out of a horse representing the knight of wands.]


End file.
